


Blue

by magtuired



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: M/M, Parent Death, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), some discussion of racism if you're sensitive to that, spoilers sorta ???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 19:57:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20981513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magtuired/pseuds/magtuired
Summary: Ashe always liked the colour blue.





	Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Harold.  
this ones for you vivi

Ashe has never really understood why people see Dedue as a monster. 

"It's your distance from what happened." Dedue responds, a answer to a question that Ashe wasn't really sure he was really asking. He's admirable. Dedue is always observing, always understanding. Always knowing before anyone else knows themselves.

Dedue continues to water the flowers as he let's Ashe think on it, moving the withered fall leaves to soak the roots below. He has never been one for forcing a conclusion on its own; unless it is forgone. Unless it is ordered.

"What happened...? Oh." Ashe frowns. "You mean at the Tragedy of Duscur?"

"Yes."

Maybe it's true. If Ashe was being honest, the incident feels like long past history. His distance both physical and emotional from what took place. His parents died of an epidemic, a tragedy without an enemy attached to it and no castle to sit in and contemplate the sudden nature of death. Death did not come to Ashe as it did to Dimitri, or Ingrid, or Felix or even Dedue himself. 

Death sat at the foot of his parents empty bed like a loyal dog as his held his mother's puss covered hands and followed him as soldiers burned his Father's body in a pile of corpses wearing the face of friends.

"Haha....You're probably right. By the time that Lonato had taught me how to read, it already felt like...history." Ashe wrings his hands; it's a nervous habit from when he hid knives in the sleeves of his tunics. 

This wasn't how he wanted their reunion conversation to go. Twenty-one years of life and a thousand mistakes later and he still feels like a shaking little boy unable to find the words to lie and comfort someone else for once.

"Do not be hard on yourself. I experienced it and it feels like "history" as well." 

Honesty would be so nice right now. To say _"I missed you."_ or _"I haven't cried in a long time, but I did at the thought of you dying alone in a cell and never even th-"_

"What do you want?"

"Uh-?" 

"I mean to say," Dedue stays, standing up to his full height, looking down at him. Ashe might not be as observant as Dedue or Mercedes but he knows a show meant to intimidate when he sees one. "-why are you here? Did you need something from me?"

They stare at each other for a few moments. Ashe is the one searching this time, trying to find the hidden meaning past the words being spoken out loud.

"Your eyes are blue." 

"I- Yes." 

Dedue looks shocked, his posture changes completely over one comment betraying what his face has been schooled not too.

"I- uh, Well! It's silly but I was looking at you and I never realised your eyes were blue. I always thought they were brown. It...made me realise I never really looked at you before."

"What a pointless observation."

There is a little Sylvain in his head right now and he is repeatedly skipping around the little Ashe in his head and smacking him with the blunt end of a lance. He's been there since it got painful to imagine Christophe in any capacity.

"I'm s-"

"It was pointless, but it was not unwelcome."

The little Sylvain and little Ashe pause. There is another long stretch of silence. Dedue looks so...weary.

"Your face flushes when you are embarrassed. It is not as if the people of Duscur do not do the same, but it is especially noticeable on you and Annette because you are both very pale. Mercedes once told me that people from that region of Faerghus are infamous for this. That the legends are you are children of demonic beings and having a physical tell that makes you poor liars is humorous."

"Y-yeah, I've definitely heard that one before....the freckles too..." Ashe touches his face, he didn't even realise he was blushing.

"She explained Sylvain's mother is also from that region, but he takes after his Father in that regard. It seemed unfair to me that, just because of the way you look, that you would be singled out as the one descended from demons. That someone could share your heritage but not be subjected to the same kind of rumours."

Ashe's feels a mixture of things as his listens, like his heart is the string of a bow being pulled taut. The meaning behind what is being said is clear.  
It feels like being bled by leeches because you held your Mother's puss covered hands.

"So, I observed you. -and it was pointless. You are not a demon, Annette is not a demon and Sylvain is a person; one with many personal problems but a person. It is pointless because I have no power and I can not change things, but I ascertained the truth of it for myself."

"So, you're saying it's...not going to change anything but you're happy." 

"Yes." 

"You're a person Dedue."

"Not to everyone. Not to myself. But...if it is to a small group of people, that is...it's enough."

Dedue does not smile with his mouth, he smiles with his eyes. It's nice when he does it. Ashe wishes he did it more often.

"I came here because I wanted to talk to you. The thought of you dying before I could say anything was-" he takes a deep breath, "-upsetting."

"People die every day."

"Yes. I know that Dedue, I'm not a child. I-" the story of what he has seen dies on his tongue. How pointless to say you have watched your parents expire to someone who watched his entire people erased by your own, to say you had to kill the man who took you in or that you found out how your adopted brother died alone in the way he almost did. He's not a child but it is childish, to desire a connection so desperately to a person you already know that you have only seen the surface of. Yet. 

"But, not everyone is you. I would cry for you. I already did."

Dedue puts down the watering can. For a moment Ashe believes he has offended him as he walks past him and out of the greenhouse until he speaks again.

"I am helping cook today. The Professor was displeased, but I insisted and it would look poorly on us both if I was late. Come speak to me again. When you have time, I will tell you about the stories they tell of people with blue eyes in Duscur."


End file.
